


To the Moon and Back

by ratwoman



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Astronomy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-06
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-23 18:09:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1574810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ratwoman/pseuds/ratwoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A birthday present for my dear friend <a href="http://janarru.tumblr.com">Maggie</a>.</p><p>Armin has always loved to look at the stars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To the Moon and Back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [secretcow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretcow/gifts).



_i_

It started with those little plastic glow-in-the-dark stars that you put on a child's walls. It was one of his earliest distinct memories, the day his mother glued them to the walls of his bedroom. He must have been about three; he remembered his jeans being a bit tight with a button that snapped shut, and that the sun light filtered in through the window.

“We'll put these up hun, and you'll never be in the dark,” she told him, squirting the wall glue on the back of the plastic stars. She arranged them in listless patterns over the wall and ceiling by his bed. There were stars that were five and four pointed, crescent moons and suns, and ones that looked like Saturn. There were a few that were shooting stars, and some with very long tails that his mother said were comets.

It had all finished far too fast, he remembered, and dinner happened and then his bath, and then he found himself lying in his bed in his bedroom with all the lights out, except for the stars which shone a dullish green.

He remembered feeling awfully naughty as he pulled the covers off and curiously opened the curtains. He'd always insisted upon having them shut at night so monsters couldn't come through the windows, and as he gazed at the sky through them he realized he'd never truly pondered the stars.

They did not twinkle, glitter, or flutter like stars in his movies, they seemed to be still and sure in the night. They were like cracks in the void, sources of life. Armin had never before pondered the stars—but now he knew.

He slept with the curtains open.

_ii_

“Your parents aren't coming home, Armin,” his grandfather had explained it to him in a soft voice, wiping tears from the six year olds face. His own cheeks had faintly seen streaks from tears, and he looked so tired and old.

“I—I want my mama!” he wailed, sobs hiccuping from somewhere deep inside him. He scrunched his eyes as the tears began to fall down his cheeks anew, his hands clenched into his fists with little half-moon crescents indented into his palms from his long nails.

His stomach was turning in his torso and it felt like his hair had been glued or somehow melded onto his head. He had nothing else. He ran from a terrifying thought from somewhere deep inside his head. Some day, he might not remember his parents voices.

They stayed at his house that one last night, and Armin stared at the plastic stars—and the darkness that ate everything around them.

_iii_

People had always thought Armin to be a bit of an oddball, but after transferring to a new school in his grandfather's district he'd been even more of an anomaly. Of course, his teachers knew the whole dirty story but none of the other children did, and he didn't really fit in.

Armin didn't play soccer at his new school because he didn't want the trouble of his grandfather driving him to and fro.

Instead, he would lay on the living room rug and look at his grandfather's books. There was a stunning collection of old stories, poetry, and nonfiction, but Armin had always gravitated towards the facts.

In particular, there was one dog eared book with very fancy high resolution photographs of the stars and planets that he must've flipped through a hundred times, licking his finger each time he turned the page and flexing his toes inside his socks. He read aloud the little descriptions that accompanied the pictures, his voice unsteady and unsure in words like “gravitational imbalance” and “atmosphere”.

“What's it say, Armin?” his grandfather asked him one evening as he looked at his newspapers and did the crossword, and Armin lay on the rug.

“Titan is the largest moon of Saturn, and the only one with a fully formed atmosphere in the solar system,” he said, “it has an atmosphere primarily composed of nitrogen, with small amounts of methane and hydrogen, along with other trace gases. Scientists believe that there is precipitation of methane on Titan, and there are several theories that Titan may house extra-terreseal life,” he said, struggling on the last word. “Grandpa, how do you say this word?” he asked, standing up and taking the book with him. He pointed out the word with his finger.

“Extraterrestrial,” his grandfather said calmly, smiling at his grandson.

“Extraterrestrial,” Armin said curiously, giving the word a taste.

_iv_

Armin had a fascination with the stars, and his grandfather humored it. When the boy had first moved in he'd gotten a new pack of the glow in the dark stars to set up in his new room, and it escalated from there.

The old astronomy books were placed on his book shelf, in sharp contrast to the other early reader books that dotted it. Soon, others, growing increasingly obscured took home in it, books on string theory and dark matter and biographies of Galileo, Copernicus, Ptolemy, and Kepler. Stephen Hawking and Sagan took up residence, as did Michio Kaku. The video house in the living room was filled with documentaries that Armin would play in the background while doing his homework.

Star charts went up on the unused walls, highlighting the constellations. As he learned them, Armin would rearrange his stars on his walls so he could have his favorite constellations.

Summer day trips were planned to museums and planetariums.

When he was twelve, he received his own collapsible telescope. It was his only present that year (it was pretty expensive) but it was all he really wanted. On Saturday nights Armin would strap the telescope in its bag to his back, and after his grandfather went to bed he would sneak out and ride his bike to one of the town parks, and he would walk up to the tallest point on the tallest hill and lay out a blanket and a pillow for his knees.

He'd set up the telescope, carefully hammering in the stand and the stakes into the soft ground (he put a lot of care into that one particular task), and he would adjust all the mirrors and magnification until he felt he was ready, and then he would gaze out of the world.

_v_

High School was four shitty, shitty years. It wasn't that Armin was without friends or decent grades, it was that those friends were just sort of empty and didn't really care and neither did he—and he wasn't learning anything he cared to learn.

His friends went to parties on Friday and Saturday nights, and Armin went stargazing. He kept forever dutiful care of his telescope, saving his money to keep it maintained and cleaning the lenses off every time he used it. He would make sure to oil the collapsible joints in it, and to polish the exterior so that it always looked sharp.

He had cut outs from magazines in his locker like lots of students, but his were pictures of galaxies and planets, unlike the prom dresses and celebrities and poems that dotted his peers'.

He had two friends—Connie Springer and Sasha Braus, and while he never attributed either of them to have much in the way of book smarts, they were intuitive in their own ways, and he had to admit that the two of them were relatively harmless.

Sasha sent him astronomy articles online that she found on the front page of NASA's website and Armin made her baked potatoes. It worked.

On his seventeenth birthday, Armin received his first ever birthday present from a friend, to which he was relatively surprised as the galaxy patterned gift bag was shoved in his hands when Sasha accosted him at his locker. “You really shouldn't've,” he said, holding the gift awkwardly in his hands.

“Well, I did,” Sasha said, “So open it!”

Armin pulled the tissue paper out of the top of the bag, and found soft but cheap fabric. He pulled it out and set the bag inside his locker, unfurling the shirt to look at it. “Sasha, this is a girl's shirt,” he said, looking it over. It was grey and tied at the bottom, and the front of the shirt was obviously printed to accommodate breasts. It had a galaxy pattern on it, with a few cheap rhinestones hear and there, and printed upon it in Helvetica were the words, “I LOVE YOU MORE THAN THE UNIVERSE ITSELF.”

“Is that really an issue?” Sasha asked in a rather dreamy voice.

“I suppose not,” Armin said thoughtfully, folding the shirt over his arm and putting it back inside of the bag. “Thank you, Sasha, really,” he said, and Sasha rearranged her things in her hands.

“Well, I'd better get going. My home room is back, in like, the other side of the building. So yeah, see you later!”

Armin gathered his things together and thought that maybe he had better friends than he'd thought at first.

_vi_

That year was a whirlwind of looking for schools. He'd wanted an astronomy or astrophysics major, and he'd hoped to minor in German, because it was where his great-grandparents had come from and he had a curiosity for it.

He had a list of in-state schools and private colleges that took up one entire lined sheet of paper that he'd taken to the guidance counselor, Mr. Ackerman, on his first day of his senior year, and had been told that he couldn't get into about three quarters of them, but he still managed to do well and get into well enough of a school with an astrophysics major (which was no easy feat).

He kept his telescope well taken care of, though he had a savings account open for a new Celestron telescope.

_vii_

His first day of German classes he sat in the back of the room next to a boy with long, shaggy brown hair who looked very tired. There just seemed to be something very serious and intimidating about the atmosphere in the room that made Armin feel on edge in it.

He slid into the stadium style seating as people started passing syllabi down the row. Armin picked up his, and handed it to the boy next to him, who looked up from staring at the cover of his text book to pick it up.

“Thank you,” he said, glancing towards the front of the room where the professor was milling around pulling things up on the projector screen. “My name's Eren,” he said, “what's yours?”

“Armin,” Armin said, trying not to let his voice hitch as he thought, _oh no he's hot._ Eren smiled and opened his mouth to say something, but the professor decided that was the perfect time to begin to teach.

_Ugh._

_viii_

There was a girl named Mikasa Ackerman who lived on Armin's floor. She listened to good music and was one of the few not taking advantage of their new found freedom from their parents to run shrieking down the halls at all hours their first few weeks at college, so Armin liked her, and she similarly liked Armin.

One evening Armin was sat in Mikasa's room playing chess over a ratty old magnetic board with rapt concentration. He hadn't played chess in a long time, and Mikasa was on her way to winning. “Check,” she said in an unassuming voice as she moved her queen a few spots.

Armin sighed and moved his king to the left. Suddenly, Mikasa's phone vibrated next to her leg, breaking the concentration of both of them as she shifted to look at it.

“My brother is coming to visit me,” she said, “Is that okay?”

“Oh yeah,” Armin said, “Of course, that's totally okay,” he said, and looked back to the chess board. Mikasa moved her bishop a few spaces, and Armin stared at the board in realization of what she had just done.

“Checkmate,” she said with a smile, as Armin stared at the board. He was in direct path of the bishop, but he couldn't move without getting in the path of her rook or queen. “Dammit,” he swore.

“Loser picks up!” Mikasa said with a smile, waving her hand to scatter pieces all over the place.

“Terrible,” Armin muttered, sweeping all the pieces into a pile and folding the chessboard over once and then twice.

As he zipped the pieces up into the bag, there was a knock on the door and Mikasa jumped up to open it, and there was Eren.

Although Armin looked at Eren a lot in class and had happened to catch him doing the same, neither had actually talked after that first day because Eren was almost always just nearly late for class, and Armin had a habit of rushing out at the very end.

“Oh, hey,” Armin said awkwardly as Eren lifted an eyebrow at him. Armin glanced down and realized he was wearing that woman's shirt Sasha had given him on his 17th birthday. Dammit.

“You know each other?” Mikasa said incredulously, glancing between the two of them as the closed to door behind her brother.

“Yeah, we take a German 101 together,” Eren explained, sitting down at Mikasa's desk chair.

“So, what brings you here anyways?” Mikasa asked, raising an eyebrow. Armin got up to put the magnetic chess back on Annie's desk. (In terms of using her roommates things, Mikasa had said, “What Annie doesn't know won't hurt her, now will it?”)

“So, what are you majoring in, Eren?” Armin asked, “Or planning to major in, anyways?”

“I forgot what it was called, but it involves me playing the trumpet. Yeah.”

“It's called Instrumental Performance,” Mikasa said.

“Yeah, that's it,” Eren said absentmindedly as he sat on the chair and fidgeted a moment. “I don't know,” he said, “I just didn't feel like sitting alone in my dorm anymore, and Reiner's gone somewhere.”

“You need more friends,” Mikasa said in an impatient voice. “You don't talk to anyone ever.”

“Hey, you're making me sound like a loser to my German buddy Armin,” Eren said, “Don't do that, come on man.”

“Well, then, don't call me man,” Mikasa said, before turning to Armin. “Don't believe a word of his shit, Armin. Eren is kind of terrible.”

“Hey, you're offensive. Maybe me and Armin had a budding friendship and now you're ruining it. Thanks a lot.”

Armin's head was swimming trying to keep up with the sibling banter. “Wait a second, how are you guys related? Like I'm pretty sure you have different last names.”

“My dad was Mikasa's godfather,” Eren said, “So after, uh, we took her in after, and yeah.”

Armin didn't press, and instead said, “My grandfather adopted me after my parents died, so I understand, I guess.”

There was a bit of an awkward silence, before Eren went on to ask, “What are you going to major in, Armin?”

“I'm majoring in Astrophysics, actually,” Armin said with a smile, “I'm... like really interested in it. It's sort of my thing, you know? It's been my thing since I was a kid, to be honest.”

“So like, stars and stuff?” Eren asked.

“That's more astronomy, but I know a lot about that too,” Armin said with a smile.

“Hey, you know, you should tell me about that, like, sometime over lunch or something,” Eren said, “Can I get your number?”

Armin blushed and took Eren's phone from him to punch in his number, but he did not miss Mikasa mouthing the word “ _Smooth,_ ” at her brother.

_ix_

Coffee was a somewhat awkward affair, for which Armin could only blame himself for being terrible at being a social human being.

It wasn't as if Armin hadn't stalked Eren's facebook about fifty times ( _he was so fucking cute, dammit,_ ) and it wasn't as though Armin hadn't noticed in Eren's basic information, and the two most important things it said: _Relationship Status: Single_ , and _Interested In: Men_.

He wondered if Eren had glanced at his, and noticed that his fields looked the very same.

“So, how did you get into astronomy and everything?” Eren asked, stirring his coffee a bit as he looked at Armin over the narrow little table.

“My mom got me interested,” Armin said, “in the smallest way I guess, when we put up those plastic glow in the dark stars in my room. I thought they were the coolest thing, but I started to open the curtains at night to look at the stars through my window after that happened. And after my parents died, studying the stars became an escape, I guess. It reminded me of them, and my grandfather had lots of books on it,” he said, fiddling his coffee before taking a deep sip.

“That's cool,” Eren said, “Like, it's not just something you think is interesting, but you have this real and whole reason behind choosing to study it. I think that sort of thought puts a lot of passion into what you do.”

“So, like, you play the trumpet?” Armin said, trying to be conversational.

“Oh, yeah, I'm a bit terrible actually,” Eren said, “Like throw away every stereotypical cool trumpet solo you can think of and add some muffled spit noises and you've got my playing, but I love it and I want to get better, you know?” he said. “I wouldn't have really had friends in high school if it weren't for marching band, to be honest. So it's special for me.”

“Yeah, that's a good reason to do it,” Armin said, “Though I really doubt that you're as terrible as you say,” he said, letting a light lilting smile grace his features.

“You're sweet,” Eren said affectionately and Armin blushed. He hardly knew Eren, and here they were having a talk like this... Armin didn't even usually speak of his mother at all. This was odd for him, but he felt something comfortable and familiar settle in his chest as Eren smiled at him.

That stupid, goofy smile. “You are too,” Armin said, looking at his coffee cup.

“Do you have a telescope here at school?” Eren asked, before sipping at his coffee quickly.

“Yeah, I have a collapsible one in my dorm, why?” Armin asked.

“Well, I have a car, and I want you to take me stargazing sometime,” Eren said, “since you're kind of the expert on this.”

“Yeah, that sounds really great. Maybe next weekend?” Armin said, wondering if Eren had just asked him out on a date, as they ironed out the details.

_x_

As soon as Armin was out of classes Friday afternoon, he was sat in his dorm making sandwiches. He'd texted Eren for his sandwich order two days before, and had gotten all the materials, and considered himself damn good at making sandwiches, thanks.

Marco, his roommate, looked upon him with amusement as Armin pressed the sandwiches down and set toothpicks through the different pieces.

“You're so methodical about it,” he said, laughing a little. “You've got this down to a science or something.”

“I should minor in Culinary Arts instead,” Armin said, wrapping the sandwiches up in saran wrap before moving to begin to make his own.

“You really like this guy, don't you?” Marco said, as Armin slathered on the low-fat mayo.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Armin said, a light blush coloring his cheeks. It was just a crush, right? It didn't matter that Armin wanted to take Eren to planetariums and pinch his stupid cheeks and kiss him. It was just another crush. There was a thousand, and there'd be a thousand more.

“You're really downplaying that,” Marco said, before getting off his bed and picking up his jacket. “Well, I gotta go. I have a coffee date. I'm out.”

With that, he left the dorm and left Armin alone to get ready to go stargazing with Eren. He finished making the sandwiches and put them inside a lunch box. Then he gathered up all the blankets and pillows and put those in a bag, and then he picked up the bag for his collapsible telescope and set that on the bed too.

All he needed to do was wait for Eren to show up at his door to help walk the load to Eren's car, hidden somewhere in the recesses of student parking, probably.

Speak of the devil. His phone went off and he checked the text, which said, “ _I'm in the stairwell, I'll be there in just a second, okay?_ ” Armin had a moment to pat down his hair before he heard someone knocking on the door. He flailed a second before swinging the door open to greet Eren with a wide smile. “Oh, good!” he said, “You're dressed warm enough! Great.”

“Yeah,” Eren said, glancing at the stuff on the bed. “That's a lot of junk.”

“It looks like more than it is,” Armin said honestly. “You can carry the bag of pillows and basements, I'll carry my telephone equipment and the food, okay?”

“Sounds good to me,” Eren said, picking up the full canvas bag and slinging it over his shoulder as Armin picked up the other stuff. They walked out, and Armin closed the door behind him and nudged the door to the stairwell open, nodding at his fellow students in idle passing as they tromped down the stairs.

The trek across canvas was long and rather uneventful, and as dusk was starting to fall Armin was so pleased to see that there wasn't a single cloud in the sky, and while it was not hot or cold it was a very pleasant temperature out and a light breeze. The weather was perfect for this, he thought to himself.

When they got to the car, Armin loaded up the route on his phone. “I found a small park about half an hour from here that people said was a really good stargazing spot,” he said, pulling up the instructions.

“That sounds good to me,” Eren said, turning on the car and backing out.

“It's a little spot called Birchwood Park,” said Armin, “The pictures looked cute. There's a wide open space, but there's also a grove a trees and a little pond and stuff.”

“Oh, that does sound cute,” Eren said. “Hey, do you wanna turn on the radio?” he asked, fiddling his fingers on the wheel but still stealing glances at Armin every few seconds.

“Sure,” Armin said, turning the dial which found itself at the local oldies station.

“Mikasa likes all this new rock stuff,” Eren said, “But I've always liked the classics, you know? I don't go mucking around in the junk when I already know whats good.”

“I know what you mean,” Armin said, before pointing out the next turn to Eren. “I brought some star charts with me too,” Armin said, “I'm not entirely sure what we can see at this latitude this week, but there'll definitely be something. My homes a bit further north, so the stars are a bit different, but I'll find it fast, don't worry,” he said.

“I place my trust in you,” Eren said playfully.

The rest of the drive was warm and musical—when Eren started to sing along, Armin couldn't help but join in until they pulled into the small parking lot outside the park and shut off the car.

They picked their loads back up and started walking through the park looking for the spot all the people had been talking about on the website, shining around with their flashlights until they found the hill one stargazer had called “exceptional”.

They scaled the hill, and Armin tasked Eren with getting out the food stuffs while he hammered the stakes for the telescope into the ground. “I think we'll need to wait a little longer to get them good enough,” he said in full honesty, “the light isn't quite ideal yet.”

They spread out the blankets and sat down, and Armin unwrapped Eren's first bit of sandwich and handed it to him. Eren gawked at him. “Armin, I know you said you liked to make sandwiches, but this is insane,” Eren said with a laugh, before he took a bite. “Armin, this is, like, really fucking good,” he said, swallowing it down quickly.

“It's not going to run away,” Armin said, before he started to eat his, becoming enraptured with the food for a moment. He hadn't eat since lunch, really, and he was hungry.

But he also couldn't miss Eren's leg subtly pressed against his. The touch was muffled by their jeans between him, but it still hit Armin's nerves white hot and exhilarating. Being so close to another person—it was just odd. But in a good way. He really liked it.

When they finished their food, Armin got back up and adjusted the telescope a bit, before saying, “Alright, we've actually got an excellent viewing spot for Virgo,” he said, “Look at it in the charts while I locate it, okay? And then I'll let you see,” he said, turning the knobs and slowly focusing the small telescope on the correct patch of sky. He noticed Venus in the corner of his eye, and Jupiter, and figured that he would show Eren those two after getting Eren to find a constellation.

Finally getting a good image, he stepped away, and said, “Eren, go on, take a look.”

Eren crouched a little before the telescope, and leaned down to look into the eye piece, going slack jawed as he looked. “I—I,” he said, losing his words.

“You've never seen the stars like that, have you?” said Armin.

“No,” Eren whispered, seemingly unable to move away from the eyepiece of the cheap old telescope.

“You should look at them more,” Armin said, a hand lightly touching Eren's back, right between his shoulder blade. “When you have the stars, you can never be really in the dark, you know?”

“Can you find more?” Eren asked him.

“Sure, I'll get you to Venus,” he said sweetly, and took Eren's spot at the eye piece to move and adjust the telescope to come to a new spot. It wasn't a particularly good night to look at the planet he realized, but it was still something, and it was something to show someone who'd never taken a look this close before.

Eren crouched down again, but this time he took Armin's hand, sending a jolt of nervousness through Armin's body. He hoped that he wouldn't sweat so that Eren wouldn't be able to tell just how much of an effect that he was starting to have on him.

“Wow, look at it,” he said, not really taking in that he was and Armin couldn't at the moment. “It's just beautiful.”

“The universe is,” Armin said softly, sitting down next to the telescope, not minding that the grass was a little damp as he watched Eren observe.

“Could you show me how the telescope works?” Eren asked.

“I guess I could give you a primer,” Armin said, and Eren looked away from the eye piece, and Armin decided to be brave. He took Eren's hands, and moved them over the parts of the telescope, pointing out the mirrors and the lenses from where they were marked on the body, and showing him the knobs and telling them how they worked and which way they could be turned.

When it was over, Eren looked back over at him with another grin, and said, “I still probably can't operate this thing. You're really smart.”

“It's more trial and error than anything,” Armin said, pulling at his sweatshirt. “You learn to use it, and then it becomes ingrained in you.”

“There's one other thing I want ingrained in you,” Eren said, and Armin realized how close they really were and oh shit Eren had grabbed his face and was kissing him and it was _amazing_ even though Eren's mouth was really spitty and Armin wasn't sure when the last time he kissed was but it was awhile ago.

He broke away after a second, before laughing at Eren, and saying, “I don't think there's actual a smooth, non-gross way you can finish that line,” and Eren shrugged.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Follow [Maggie](http://janarru.tumblr.com) and [I](http://reiryugazacki.tumblr.com) on Tumblr.


End file.
